Getting more from LaMelo: Charlotte Hornets GM Kupchak wants improvement in two areas
As good as he is, as young as he is and as promising as he is, Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball needs to get better if his team is going to go anywhere.
No matter who the Hornets’ next coach turns out to be — and a new one will likely be hired in the next seven to 14 days — his first task will be coaxing more out of Ball.
Melo is the foundation of this team and already an NBA All-Star. He’s often extraordinary. But he’s also 20 years old, and he sometimes makes the sort of decisions on a basketball court an ordinary 20-year-old would make.
I asked Mitch Kupchak, the Hornets’ general manager, during his news conference Thursday where he most wanted to see improvement from Ball in Year 3.
Said Kupchak of the 6-foot-7, 180-pound Ball: “He’s got to get stronger, which obviously means he’s got to get in the weight room. And then the next step is also becoming a better two-way player. You know, offensively he’s just a joy to watch, and a joy to play with. … The things you can control, right now, would be getting stronger and becoming a better two-way player, which means on the defensive side.”
All of that is true. Ball also is iffy in 2-for-1, end-of-game and end-of-quarter situations sometimes — shooting too early or ending up with a bad shot too late. That, Kupchak said, would naturally improve with time.
Let’s specify right now we’re pointing out the chinks in a mostly pristine set of armor. Ball is a bona fide star and watching him on the fast break is one of life’s singular pleasures.
Teammates love to run with him, too, because they know he’ll give them the ball at the first opportunity. He’s an unselfish player, and anyone who has ever played the game knows how significant that is.
But while Ball can blow by people on offense, he can also get blown by on defense. He’s prone to committing unnecessary fouls. Sometimes he’ll miss a shot on offense, look toward the official hoping for a foul call and not get back quickly enough on D.
In other words, the new coach has some work to do with Ball, especially on the defensive end. Ball needs to accept the coaching, and the new coach has to accept the fact that Ball needs to be coached. Rolling the ball out there and saying, “Melo, go create something” is tempting, but that isn’t going to get it done.
Ball gets told how great he is all the time — that’s not a problem. He’s proven many doubters wrong before, including me. But he’s far from perfect, and the new coach will need to hold him accountable for his mistakes.
The Hornets have missed the 16-team NBA playoffs in both of Ball’s seasons. In both cases, they made the NBA play-in tournament, only to get blasted out of it — by 27 points in Ball’s rookie year and by 29 points in Year 2. Those two games, as much as anything else, were the reason why former coach James Borrego was fired.
So although the Hornets won 43 games in the 2021-22 season, in a larger sense Ball hasn’t won anything yet. And he remains the engine of a team with a lot of talent. As former Hornets point guard Muggsy Bogues told me of Ball: “They go as he goes.”
For growing up in a basketball family that was almost Kardashian-esque in the amount of attention it has drawn, Ball can be surprisingly down to earth.
“I’m not worried about his work ethic and him getting in the gym,” Kupchak said. “He loves the game.”
Kupchak said he hoped the 2022-23 Hornets win three to seven more games than they did in their most recent season, which would translate to somewhere between 46 and 50 wins and surely to an NBA playoff berth. Then, the GM said, it would be nice to win a round in the playoffs — something Charlotte’s NBA franchise hasn’t done since 2002.
All of that is possible.
But none of it will happen without another improvement from Ball — this time in the grittier side of the game.
This story was originally published May 19, 2022 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Getting more from LaMelo: Charlotte Hornets GM Kupchak wants improvement in two areas."
